More standard SBEmails. Clearly nothing exciting will happen.

I’m only about an eighth of the way through the SBEmail archives, and already I feel like I’m running out of ways to introduce them. At least I can say the worst is behind us. As I mentioned last time, early-to-mid 2002 was sort of a transitional period of SBEmails, where the “respond in a cynical fashion” emails started to get replaced more and more often by some toons with more substance to them. And today I’ve got several more to go through from this era, starting with 3 Wishes.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail27.html

Looks like we’re back to the “never leave the computer” type again for this one. I guess they didn’t want to abandon that style completely yet. Of the ones from that category, this is probably one of the better ones in my opinion, but the email’s subject is probably the least funny part about it, oddly enough. The horns are great and all, but I find it more interesting that Brandon asks what specifically the second wish would be. I’m not entirely sure what the first one would be. Strong Sad and Homestar’s pain and suffering? Catapult that launches balls of cobras? Ali and Ali’s sister? The guy has a lot of interests.

I also enjoy the part at the end where he complains about “crapfully yours” and its various alternative forms. I do like using that as a closing to messages (and also “eat a steak”), but seriously people, it’s not that funny. I’m not even sure how that got started. But I digress, because I do enjoy seeing Strong Bad getting all cheesed off over it whenever someone says it. But anyway, there’s not too much else to say about this one, so let’s move on to 1 step ahead.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail28.html

I rather enjoy this one. I was never really into the choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid, though I did try a couple of them, I found them more irritating than entertaining. But it’s a nice touch added to this one. Apparently when it was first released, only the “take it in a different direction” part would play and there were no other options available. I never personally ran into this, but I do remember the “maybe” option glitching out the first few times I watched it. Instead of playing the usual scene, it would skip to about halfway through the “different direction” scene. That must have been fixed quite a while ago though.

Out of the three choices, I actually like the first one (“yes”) the best, and “maybe” the least. I don’t like the idea of covering Strong Sad in red ants, and the lack of an audible reaction to it is kind of upsetting. However, something is just funny about Strong Sad getting repeatedly pegged by dodgeballs and being unable to do anything about it. And then when you click on him at the end, you get a little minigame to mess around with. The only thing worth noting about that is that you can aim for the left side of his body, and then you’ll actually bounce the ball through the basketball hoop and get an extra point. And I guess I should probably say something about the last option… but too bad, I’m not going to. It sort of speaks for itself, honestly. And I’d rather just keep going and watch superhero name.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail29.html

This one’s actually kind of hard to talk about. It’s the introduction of Strong Badman, but if you’re looking forward to this character appearing a lot more often, don’t get your hopes up. He does show up in Easter eggs every once in a while, but unless I’m mistaken, it won’t be until after the 100th email that we see any of those, so yeah. It’s kind of a shame, because I think there is potential for a superhero comic parody on this website, but they never make it into a recurring feature. Oh well. At least we got “Stiny” out of it, that’s gotta be worth something.

I’ll just go ahead and say it – Stiny is an awesome name. I actually used it for my Basculin in Pokémon White 2, up until I replaced it with a second Basculin named Stinym’n, which was implied to be the superhero alter ego of the original. Yeah, don’t ask. Let’s just ignore that and check out 12:00.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail30.html

“Corey Dewey-Smith” isn’t quite as great of a name as Stiny, but it comes pretty close. I love the way that Strong Bad pronounces that, and the fact that he keeps going back to it.

And uh… yeah. The rest of this one is kind of forgettable. The solution they come up with is pretty ingenious, I have to admit, but not the most practical thing for people who are also having this problem. Which I imagine is the majority of people who still have VCRs. And car clocks, for that matter. I hate having to mentally subtract 3 hours and 34 minutes from the time displayed on the clock in our car, but screw looking for the user’s manual. I’d much rather just duct tape The Cheat to the dashboard.

This email also has an Easter Egg in it, which you may have picked up on if you remember how to access Homsar’s character page. Just hit the Eject button, then click on the tape, and repeat to keep getting different labels. I’m too young to get most of the references, but alas. Next up is … oh hey, it’s actually not a SBEmail for once. So let’s take a short break from those and watch the equally as Strong Bad-centric toon known as The Interview.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/interview.html

I’ve always liked this one. It’s pretty simple, but has a lot of memorable lines. So I might as well go with the standard ”bullet list of stuff that I feel like mentioning” to cover this one.

• I think Homestar walking by the window several times before coming in is probably my favorite gag in this. I don’t really know why, it’s just hilarious to me for some reason. Especially because he keeps coming from the same direction.
• And then right after that, the whole exchange with “I drove”, “yeah, you’re probably right”, and “brass tacks” is pure gold. This is exactly why I love Homestar.
• Homestar’s “resume” (pronounced incorrectly) is a grocery list that includes “five” and “dentifrice”.
• Strong Bad has an interest in baking (as we have seen before), as well as doing the Jumbles (as we will see in the future). Jumbles are a type of puzzle found in newspapers, for the record.
• Gotta love the fight between Strong Sad and The Cheat. It might even be more epic than the knife fight between Coach Z and Pom Pom on the stone bridge.
• *abruptly leaves and starts prancing around*

Trivia Time: This toon actually has an unfinished “beta” version available, which is almost identical, but lacks a few lines here and there, and the animation is a little different. For some reason, this unfinished one is called “interview 2” in the url. You can find it here. And also, according to the DVD commentary, this was originally meant to be a secret toon that you would only learn about by finding the url in a magazine called “Metro Pop”. They then decided later on to release it normally. So yeah, I’m not sure what that’s all about, but I felt like mentioning it anyway. That was a nice little distraction, but I guess it’s time to go back to the emails again. Next up is … *groan* sugarbob.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail31.html

I’d love to say that this is the last of the really boring, basic emails, but there are still a couple more I can think of that we haven’t reached yet. I mean, this one isn’t awful, but it’s a distinct step down from the previous few, and it’s not like those were a monument of excellence either. I’ve already said several times now that I never found Strong Bad’s claims that he’s popular with the ladies to be funny. And I’m sure this isn’t the last time you’ll hear me say that either. But yeah, this one is annoyingly similar to making out, which I still say is probably the worst email ever. And I really have nothing else to say about it other than the Tandy once again exceeding its technical limitations. Whatever the next email is, please, save me. It’s apparently flag day.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail32.html

It occurs to me that I haven’t really addressed the background music used in toons very often. Whenever there’s a major song like O Decemberween, I’ll talk about it, and I’ve mentioned that I like some other ditties like the song from little animal (which was reused from Where’s The Cheat, incidentally), but then there’s stuff like the Strong Badian national anthem. The lyrics are obviously the main thing that people are going to pay attention to, but there’s the little tune played on the old Casio keyboard also. Yes, it’s only 9 notes long and isn’t all that noteworthy, but it’s catchy enough for me to remember it years after the last time I’ve seen the email, and it didn’t write itself. Next time there’s some background music in a Homestar toon, just realize that they did have to write an original song for that and then play and record it. It’s easy to take little things like that for granted.

So as for the meat of the email, I don’t really have a whole lot to say about the song itself (other than I like it, and it fits Strong Bad and his little dirt patch quite well), but the flag does deserve some comments. The first few times I saw this, I never really paid much attention to the colors and design of the stripes on the flag, but once it was pointed out to me, I find it weird that I never noticed. The brown and white represent the dirt and fence of Strong Badia, and the red probably represents Strong Bad himself. Then of course you’ve got the tire, which is sort of a given, seeing as how it’s the entire population of the area, the big knife, and for some reason a snake. Which says “Snake” on it. Because snakes are cool, I guess.

Lastly, there’s a few Easter eggs in this one, in case you haven’t gotten into the habit of clicking on the toon and holding Tab the entire time it plays (which you will probably want to start doing at some point, but I’ll keep pointing these out until they become a regular thing). For this one, you’ll want to click on “Pablo Phoenix” once Strong Bad starts talking about the name, and also click on The Cheat after Strong Bad’s coin goes away. I could probably say a few other things about this one, but it’s getting kinda long already, and I do want to do one last email today, so let’s finish strong with gimmicks.

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail33.html

First off, before I even talk about the major event here, I have to openly disagree with Mike W. Some of the basic emails were pretty funny, like trevor the vampire for instance, but on the other end of the spectrum, there’s junk like sugarbob and the basics. I’d much rather take a “gimmick” over just watching Strong Bad respond to an email and not do anything interesting with it. This is probably like the 12th time I’ve mentioned this, but it’s a point I really do want to drive home. Now, some might say that having too many cutaway scenes would make the humor too Family Guy-ish, but for this series, I think it works better, because they’re (usually) not irrelevant, and they’re not interrupting a larger storyline. Strong Bad Emails (and all Homestar toons, really) are short things to watch that don’t need to try to have a real “purpose”, as long as they’re funny. And if you can show something rather than just talk about it, then by all means, go ahead.

Ok, with that out of the way, the Tandy explodes. I know I just got done saying that there’s no story or continuity with this series, but Strong Bad’s computers are an exception to that. This is the beginning of the end of the Tandy era. The eventual switch to a new computer doesn’t really provide much of a difference in the way that emails are handled, but the switch does solidify the switch from the old simple style to the new, “gimmicky” one. It’s been slowly getting there for a while now, but this is an easily recognizable turning point of the series. And the delicious irony of all this is the fact that Mike W apparently did not want this change to happen, and yet it did in the most abrupt and unexpected way possible. I love it.

Well, I couldn’t ask for a better stopping point than this, so I’m going to take this opportunity to take a break from Strong Bad emails for a bit and focus on something else. Yes, it’s finally time to go back and look at some of the stuff I skipped over from 2000, plus some extra Museum junk and assorted riff-raff. Not all of it is completely boring, I think it’s actually quite interesting to see how the website has evolved over time. Hopefully most of you would agree with me, but if not, then look forward to some pretty decent SBEmails once I get back to the usual content. Just bear with me for a couple updates as I enjoy the inherent weirdness of the older material on the website.